This invention relates to a character and image processing apparatus having combined functions of an optical character reader (hereinafter referred to as OCR) and a facsimile (hereinafter referred to as FAX).
Recently, a character and image processing apparatus having combined functions of the OCR and the FAX has been developed, which recognizes character data and image data on a sheet to provide coded character data and non-coded image data (except for coding for data compression) to a host computer, for example.
However, in a prior-art character and image processing system, positions of character data to be read out and image data to be scanned on a slip should be prestored in the apparatus as format control data. This system is suitable for such applications in which a large quantity of sheets having the same formats are processed, but is not suitable for a text entry in which sheets having different formats are processed.